Meta just handed Corning a $6 billion commitment through 2030 to supply fiber-optic cables for its AI data centers, CEO Wendell Weeks told CNBC in an exclusive interview. The deal marks one of the largest infrastructure partnerships in the AI buildout, with the 175-year-old glassmaker - best known for supplying iPhone screens - now expanding its North Carolina facility into what it claims will be the world's largest fiber-optic cable plant. It's a sign of how the AI race is reshaping century-old supply chains and creating unexpected winners in the infrastructure layer.
Meta is placing a massive bet on glass. The social media giant has committed to paying Corning up to $6 billion through 2030 for fiber-optic cables to wire its AI data centers, CEO Wendell Weeks revealed to CNBC during a factory tour in Hickory, North Carolina. It's a deal that transforms the 175-year-old glassmaker - once synonymous with Pyrex cookware and iPhone screens - into a critical infrastructure player in the AI race.
The partnership comes as Meta scrambles to build 30 data centers by 2028, including 26 facilities across the U.S., as part of a $600 billion domestic infrastructure commitment. Two of the company's largest projects - the one-gigawatt Prometheus site in New Albany, Ohio, and the five-gigawatt Hyperion facility in Richland Parish, Louisiana - will both run on Corning fiber under the new agreement. "We want to have a domestic supply chain that's available to support that," Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, told CNBC.
But this isn't just about Meta. Corning is expanding its Hickory plant to meet surging demand from Nvidia, OpenAI, , , and - all racing to build AI infrastructure at unprecedented scale. "Almost every phone call I get from my customers is trying to see, how do we get them more?" Weeks said. "I think next year the hyperscalers will be our biggest customers."
